A Troubled King Gets a Message from the Mystery-Revealing, Wisdom-Giving God

I. Intro: Troubled Readers Visionary literature in Scripture is complicated. Technically, chapter 2 of the book of Daniel is a narrative. It’s a story about one of Daniel’s interactions with King Nebuchadnezzar. But the interaction features the interpretation of a dream, and so the chapter certainly reflects some of the complexities of visionary literature elsewhere in the Bible. Indeed, chapter 2 of Daniel should be read in parallel with chapter 7: both feature a vision or dream focused on four earthly kingdoms followed by God’s kingdom. However, Daniel chapter 2 does have a more elaborate narrative framework, a historical context that is very important to keep in mind. But it’s the visionary component of this chapter and of the whole book that gives us as readers some measure of grief. In fact, as much as we’re going to see Nebuchadnezzar troubled by a dream in chapter 2, and later we’re going to see Daniel troubled by his visions, we readers can feel quite troubled as we attempt to understand this book! In other contexts, I’ve called attention to the importance of keeping the forest in view so that we don’t get lost examining the trees, and that will prove very important to keep in mind. With that in mind, the message of Daniel 2 can be summarized this way: God alone has the wisdom and might to rule and explain history, and his eternal kingdom will finally replace all human kingdoms. For our purposes today, we are going to consider the first 23 verses of chapter 2, which won’t get us into any of the details of the actual dream. As it turns out, structurally, the most important part of the chapter is not the content of the dream or its interpretation. Don’t misunderstand me: the dream and its interpretation are important, and we will unpack it next week. But the way Daniel has written this account puts the emphasis on the midpoint of the chapter, which is actually verses 17-23, highlighting Daniel’s poetic praise of God. That is the main thing! Yes, it is important to understand “the mystery” God reveals in this chapter; but it is much more important that we see and understand the God who reveals the mystery. Daniel has written this chapter in a chiastic structure that looks like this: 1. Nebuchadnezzar Responds to His Dream (2:1–3) 2. Babylonian Wise Men Fail to Convey the Dream and Interpretation (2:4–13) 3. Daniel Speaks with the Captain of the Guard (2:14–16) 4. Daniel Praises God for Answering His Prayer (2:17–23) 3′. Daniel Speaks with the Captain of the Guard (2:24–25) 2′. Daniel Succeeds in Conveying the Dream and Interpretation (2:26–45) 1′. Nebuchadnezzar Responds to Daniel’s Interpretation (2:46–49) You can see the parallel sections that move inward toward that midpoint of verses 17-23. Let’s look at the narrative introduction to this chapter and consider the dreams that troubled a king. Look at Daniel 2:1-3. II. Dreams that Troubled a King (Dan. 2:1-3) 1 In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. 3 And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” The king of Babylon finds his sleep interrupted by bad dreams. The plural may indicate that this is a recurring nightmare. In the Babylonian worldview, dreams were usually believed to have significance, possibly as messages from the gods. But the messages of dreams are embedded in the imagery; symbolism needed to be interpreted and explained, and there were professionals to call for such work. That the king is so troubled and so desperate to understand the meaning of this recurring nightmare suggests that he understands something of the dream. He surely has some suspicions about what it might mean, and his imagination is probably running wild with all kinds of ominous scenarios. If you’ve read ahead or you remember the contents of the dream, you know that it depicts a great statue that is finally smashed to bits by a stone. Such a scenario could indicate King Nebuchadnezzar’s assassination or his kingdom’s overthrow by some other power. Later in the passage, we learn an extra detail about the circumstances from Daniel. Look down at Daniel 2:29. Daniel says to the king, “To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be.” King Nebuchadnezzar was lying awake at night, thinking about the future, worrying about his kingdom and his legacy. Can you relate? In that worrisome state, the king drifted off to sleep and received a message from the God “who reveals mysteries,” a symbolic dream from Yahweh, the God of Israel. Does it seem odd to you that our great God chose to reveal such a grand message to a pagan king, to a wicked man who believed his made-up gods were more powerful than the one true God? Yahweh, the God of Israel, chose to reveal part of his plan for human history to this ungodly Babylonian king, an evil man under the judgment of God! When God speaks to people, we should never assume that it’s because the people deserve to hear God’s voice, to receive God’s message. At this point, however, at the beginning of chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has no idea who sent the message, and he doesn’t have clarity or certainty about what it means. So, he summons the experts, the magicians, sorcerers, enchanters, and astrologers to use all their expertise to explain the meaning of his dream. Look at verses 4-13. The troubled king troubles his advisers, asking them to do the impossible. III. 4 The Troubled King Troubles His Advisers (Dan. 2:4-13) Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” 5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.” 7 They answered a second time and said, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation.” 8 The king answered and said, “I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm— 9 if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.” 10 The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” 12 Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. From this point in verse 4 through the end of chapter 7, Daniel switches to the Aramaic language as he writes down the story. Why does he make this unusual language change? Aramaic was one of the major trade languages used by many different nations during this period of history. It uses the same alphabet as Hebrew; in fact, it’s likely that what we know of today as Biblical Hebrew probably developed its written form from the Aramaic alphabet, even though the Hebrew language itself may be much older than Aramaic. So, it’s possible that Aramaic is used in these chapters as Daniel sees the stories that unfold and his first visionary experience in chapter 7 as having a more direct message for Gentiles. The Hebrew introduction of chapter 1 tells the story of the first phase of the exile of the Jews and how God superintended events for the good of a few of his faithful people. Then, Daniel describes his visions in chapters 8-12 in Hebrew, perhaps emphasizing their message for the Jewish people. Even though the vision of chapter 8 and the final vision of chapters 10-12 says a lot about Gentile kingdoms, there is a focus on the suffering of the Jews at the hands of these Gentile kingdoms. And, of course, chapter 9, written in Hebrew, highlights Daniel’s prayer asking God to fulfill his promises to restore the Jews, and God’s answer delivered through the angel Gabriel elaborates how that fulfillment will come to pass in an unexpected way. When we come to chapter 7, we’ll revisit this question; if the Aramaic section is tailored toward Gentiles, how does that square with the centerpiece of the vision of chapter 7 being the kingdom of the Son of Man and his saints? Alternatively, and possibly a simpler explanation, it’s quite reasonable to think that Daniel wrote chapters 2-7 in Aramaic, as the normal language he would’ve been accustomed to writing in for his official Babylonian and Persian duties, and then, very near the end of his life, as the Lord guided him to prepare the final scroll that would be circulated as God’s message for God’s people, he added a Hebrew introduction and attached the final chapters in Hebrew as well. Back in chapter 2, these professional dream interpreters make a reasonable request; they ask the king to describe his dream to them. This would’ve been standard procedure. The king has a dream, asks the professionals what the divinely inspired message is, describes the details as best as he could remember, and then the professionals consult their dream interpretation manuals where certain symbols and images had been recorded over the years to have certain meanings. Or, if there were particularly challenging pieces of the dream, or the professionals saw conflicting images and couldn’t make sense out of it all, then they might go to some more extreme divination practices, such as cutting open a goat’s belly, digging out the liver, and “reading” the markings on the liver to see what a particular god says about the dream. Well, Nebuchadnezzar’s not feeling “standard procedure” today. He insists that they first describe to him the contents of his dream. He says in verse 5, “The word from me is firm.” If you’re reading from the KJV, you’ll see something different; it says, “The thing is gone from me,” which seems to imply that he had forgotten the contents of the dream. However, the KJV translators misunderstood the Aramaic verb here; all modern English translations are correct. Nebuchadnezzar is communicating the urgency and unchangeableness of his decree. If they can do this, they will prove to him that they have the ability to explain its meaning. This surely reflects the king’s troubled state. The dream was disturbing to him, which, again, suggests that he got the ominous tone of the dream and realizes that it is seriously important, and he feels that it may in fact be a life-or-death issue for him personally, so much so that he cannot afford to be deceived about its significance. So, he makes this a life-or-death issue for the professionals! King Nebuchadnezzar threatens to execute them and their families if they don’t do this, but, on the other hand, he offers them riches and prestige if they do. Can you imagine hearing this from a person in power? This man holds their lives in his hands, and he’s asking them to do something that they know is impossible. Initially, it seems, they are in such disbelief that surely they’ve misunderstood his request. So, they repeat their desire for “standard procedure” to please operate, as normal here. They’re confident in their abilities to tell a good story as an explanation of whatever symbolism he saw in his dream, but to describe the contents of his dream—that’s ludicrous! They can’t just make something up here! He’ll know if they’re lying! And, in verse 8, Nebuchadnezzar seems to show his suspicion that they all might just be a bunch of frauds. You’ve got to wonder, at this point, if the dream has got him so terrified that he’s gone a bit insane. He’s really being unreasonable here, isn’t he? There’s no precedent for this. How could he legitimately expect them to do this? He’s ready to murder them all—and their families—if they don’t do the impossible thing he’s requested! He accuses them of attempting “to gain time,” or “to buy time,” as we might say. He suspects they’re stalling, hoping he’ll change his mind or tip his hand and reveal the contents of his dream. In the middle of verse 9, he lays quite the paranoid charge against them: “You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change.” He accuses them of conspiring together, ready to give him a favorable interpretation of whatever dream he had, fearful of offending him. Gee, I wonder why? They’re hoping they can stall long enough that he’ll give in and reveal the contents of the dream, or that he’ll lose interest in figuring it out, or he’ll get distracted by some other urgent concern that doesn’t put them in such danger, or even that he’ll be replaced by another king! In verses 10-11, however dishonest these professionals might be, they’re telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth as far as they believe: “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” First, they express their belief in the universal impossibility of anyone on the planet satisfying the king. Second, they subtly accuse the king of being way too demanding, going way outside his reasonable jurisdiction, as they acknowledge the unprecedented nature of the king’s request. Third, they employ some rhetorical understatement: “The thing that the king asks is difficult.” Yeah, “impossible” is the word you’re looking for. Finally, they suggest that a god could maybe, possibly, have the ability to know what went on inside Nebuchadnezzar’s head while he was asleep, but then they add their belief that such gods don’t really involve themselves in the affairs of people on the earth. They don’t care enough about humans to communicate directly with them; even if they send these dreams, they’re always intended to be cryptic, and they aren’t eager to help people understand them. Instead, you have to jump through the right hoops, offer the right sacrifices, say the right incantations, and maybe you might get a close approximation of the messages of the gods. What a religion! But, as it turns out, they are wrong in their belief! Yahweh, the God of Israel, dwells with flesh! As commentator Mitch Chase writes, “The notion of gods dwelling with mortals may have seemed inconceivable in Babylonian lore, but the stories in Israel’s history painted a much different picture. From the beginning of Israel’s Scriptures, Yahweh was a God who dwelled with his people. He was in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve…, his glory filled the tabernacle the Israelites carried to the Promised Land…, and he indwelled the temple in Jerusalem. The story of the world’s true Lord is that of a God who dwells with flesh. In the outworking of God’s redemptive plan, one day the Word himself would not only dwell with flesh but become flesh.” And so here, Daniel’s God can and will reveal the contents of one man’s dream to another man, and he will provide the meaning as well, since he is the God who sent the message in the first place. Well, Nebuchadnezzar didn’t like their response very much. He immediately decrees every member of that professional class must be executed, and he sends out the executioner to go door-to-door, rounding them up to unceremoniously execute all of them together. At the end of verse 13, we are reminded that Daniel and his three friends from chapter 1 are among this class of professionals. Perhaps in his foaming-at-the-mouth rage, it slipped the great king’s mind that the foreigner Daniel had so distinguished himself from the Babylonian advisers that he was “ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom.” If he had been in his right mind, perhaps he would’ve summoned Daniel by name in the first place. Nevertheless, in verses 14-16, when Daniel is finally informed of the situation, we see Daniel responding quite differently from the rest of the Babylonian wise men. Look at verses 14-16. IV. Daniel Responds Differently (Dan. 2:14-16) 14 Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. 15 He declared to Arioch, the king’s captain, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel. 16 And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king. We see Daniel’s wisdom on display here, but also his faith. He faces execution—and, of course, it won’t be the last time he faces down the prospect of a grisly death—and he confidently assures the executioner that the king can name the date, and he will satisfy the king’s impossible demand! Daniel’s only recorded words here are the question about why the king has made such a hasty and harsh decree. After the captain of the guard tells Daniel that the king has had this troubling dream, and the king has made this impossible demand, and the Babylonian wise men couldn’t do the impossible thing the king asked them to do, how does Daniel respond? Does he simply say, “Give me a chance. The king didn’t call me in; let me take a crack at it”? Or is he more confident? In either case, I’m sure Daniel wasn’t being presumptuous here. The next verses make it clear that Daniel didn’t suffer from any kind of pride or self-confidence. Look at verses 17-19, and see how God mercifully reveals the mystery. V. 17 God Mercifully Reveals the Mystery (Dan. 2:17-19a) Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 18 and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19a Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Daniel doesn’t presume or assume that God will act in a particular way. Instead, he prays, and he summons his three friends to pray as well. Notice, again, their Hebrew names being used here, rather than their Babylonian names. Notice also how he instructs them to pray; they are to “seek mercy,” plead for compassion from the God of heaven, so that their lives might be spared. They ask God to express his compassion toward their plight. They are in exile, under God’s judgment, as part of the people of Judah being punished for their rebellion and idolatry. Daniel and his friends are among the tiny faithful remnant that’s already been dragged off into Babylon. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple hasn’t happened yet. Most of the Jewish people still live in the land. But, here, he doesn’t presume on God’s kindness. Instead, he asks for compassion, to be spared from certain death at the hands of a murderous king. This is the first of several times in the book of Daniel where we will see these Jewish people praying. Let me take this first time as an opportunity to clarify a comment I made about prayer a couple of weeks ago that I think may have troubled some of you. In our concluding message from the book of Habakkuk, toward the end, I said that the old adage “prayer changes things” is not true. I still stand by that statement, but let me clarify. If prayer doesn’t change our circumstances, then why do Daniel and his three friends pray here? They are certainly asking God to change their circumstances; they are asking God to show compassion by revealing the dream and its interpretation to Daniel and to thus spare them from execution. As I said just a moment ago, Daniel is not presumptuous; he doesn’t know how God will answer his prayer. He doesn’t know whether God will change his circumstances or not. Prayer does not change things, but God can and does sometimes change things in response to our prayers. My point in saying it so jarringly, that it is not true that prayer changes things, is because we can miss the main purpose of prayer very easily. If we believe that prayer changes things, then we can pretty easily move into a mindset that prays only because we want things to change. Scripture teaches us that this is not the primary purpose of prayer. We should pray because we want to share our life with our heavenly Father; we should pray because it’s one of the main ways we commune and fellowship with him; we should pray so that we can verbalize our gratitude and praise to our great God. Yes, we should also pray so that we can ask for his help, and of course it is good and right to express to God our desire for our circumstances to change. But don’t you know, from your own experience, that just because you pray doesn’t mean anything in your circumstances will actually change? We have to learn to pray according to God’s will and in Jesus’s name. But, as I said in the Habakkuk sermon, most often God’s concern is not so much to change our circumstances; instead, most often God is working to change us as we talk things through and make our requests known to the Lord. For Daniel and his three friends, however, the Lord did respond by changing their circumstances! He revealed the mystery to Daniel. What is a “mystery”? Simply put, a “mystery” is a message or truth that has been partially revealed but requires further revelation to more fully understand. It’s like the center of a Tootsie Pop. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Usually lots. Likewise, in Scripture, a mystery might take several Spiritempowered authors to get to the bottom of a mystery. But, like the Tootsie Pop, you know there’s some chocolatey goodness in there, but when you first open the wrapper, you can’t see it or taste it. “Mystery” becomes an important biblical term; in some ways, it’s a key concept in understanding the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. For our purposes today, we can simply observe that God sent this message to Nebuchadnezzar in the form of a symbolic dream. The message was partially revealed in the contents of the dream, which the king perceived, but it would require God revealing to Daniel a more complete understanding of the message. And, indeed, the New Testament authors will draw on this dream at least a couple of times to peel back yet another layer to see the core of the message. It was always there, hidden right under the surface, hidden in the text of Daniel 2, and with Spiritilluminated hindsight, we can see it now, too. In Daniel 2, the word “mystery” as Daniel uses it in verse 18 refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation. To Nebuchadnezzar, this was a “mystery” because he didn’t understand the meaning. But he knew the content of the dream, and it’s likely that he understood enough to believe that it had a potentially ominous significance for him personally. Thus, “mystery” takes on this multi-part structure of something partially revealed that requires some later revelation to understand the full message that was originally there. The Bible is, in some ways, like reading a mystery novel, a classic “whodunnit.” Once you finish reading the book and you find out “who done it,” if you read the novel again, details early in the book take on greater significance. You see things you missed altogether the first time reading through. But those things were always there; the author of the mystery novel intended those details to point to the identity of the villain or the circumstances of the conflict, but a first-time reader would never have guessed that those details pointed to that reality. Likewise, God often inspired statements in Scripture that have a relatively clear, coherent, surface-level meaning, immediately discernible by the original readers, but he also intended a beneath-the-surface statement that could only be understood when read together with further revelation. Now, let’s consider Daniel’s remarkable poetic praise of the God who reveals mysteries. We’ll pick up in the middle of verse 19 and read through verse 23. VI. Daniel Praises God (Dan. 2:19b-23) 19 Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. 20 Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. 21 He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; 22 he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. 23 To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king’s matter.” In Daniel’s praise of God, in a sense, he’s foreshadowing the contents of the dream. He’s now seen it; he knows what’s in it and he knows what it means. So, as he verbalizes and writes down his praise of God, he’s highlighting the central feature of the dream and its meaning. The dream is about God changing times and seasons; it’s about God removing kings and setting up kings; it’s about God’s sovereignty over human history. We see the same emphasis on God’s gracious sovereignty from chapter 1 in Daniel praising God for giving wisdom and for God giving knowledge. Notice also that he praises God in verse 20 for his wisdom and might, and then he thanks and praises God in verse 23 for giving wisdom and might to Daniel, revealing the details of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its divinelyintended meaning, in response to Daniel and his three friends’ request. This is the big contrast to the theology of the Babylonian wise men. They don’t really believe gods reveal these things to people! How much more awesome is Daniel’s God! Another thing to notice here is something that Daniel will revisit later in his conversation with Nebuchadnezzar: God’s gracious giving of wisdom, God’s gracious revelation of this dream and its meaning to Daniel is to be seen as simply a gracious gift of a giving God. Daniel will explicitly say later in verse 30 that God didn’t give this gift to Daniel because he deserved it, because he was wiser than other people, or because he somehow earned it. Rather, God gave it because that’s who the true God is, a God who gives! VII. Conclusion: The Mystery-Revealing, Wisdom-Giving God The message of Daniel 2 is God alone has the wisdom and might to rule and explain history, and his eternal kingdom will finally replace all human kingdoms. The second half of that summary statement highlights the point of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which we’ll take a close look at next week. The first part is reflected in our passage today. But even as the message of Daniel 2 depicts the reality of the mystery-revealing, wisdom-giving God in his ability to both rule and explain history, we engage with the same God today, and he must reveal himself, he must give wisdom to us, if we are to be saved. Jesus said as much when he prayed, in Matthew 11:25-27, “25 I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” For anyone to have a real relationship with God, whether Jew or Gentile, Jesus has to reveal him to each person. Outside of Jesus’s choice to reveal the Father to a person, no one on the face of the planet throughout history could ever or would ever find God on their own. In another place, Jesus says that the Father also draws people to himself, which probably refers to the Father’s providential ordering of people’s circumstances so that they are confronted with the gospel. The apostle Paul elaborates this point in 1 Corinthians 2:14 in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit; the 2011 NIV translates the verse this way: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” The gospel message, the message of the Bible—none of it can be properly embraced and responded to unless the Spirit of God does something to us. This is why we should pray so urgently and desperately for our loved ones who don’t know Jesus. They can’t know God unless Jesus reveals him to them; they can’t believe the gospel unless the Holy Spirit first grants them life. Daniel and his friends prayed, asking the Lord to reveal the mystery to them, which would save both their lives and the lives of the other Babylonian wise men. They asked God to show compassion. How much more should you and I be pleading with God to show compassion, to show mercy, to extend his grace to our lost relatives? No matter how urgently we plead with people, no matter how clearly we share the gospel, no matter how faithfully we live before them, if God doesn’t act inside them to turn on the lights, to open their eyes, to remove their deafness, to give their dead souls life, they will never, can never receive what we’re offering. As Jesus said in John 6:63a, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” The wisdom and power belong to God alone. His wisdom is embodied in the gospel, a kind of mystery, partially revealed in shadows and foreshadowings in the Old Testament and more fully revealed in the New Testament writers’ explanations of the gospel. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:7 (NIV 2011), “We declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” It is Jesus himself who embodies God’s wisdom and God’s power, and God’s wisdom and God’s power are both on display and offered to us in the crucifixion of our Savior. Daniel praised God for his wisdom and his power, and he thanked God for sharing his wisdom and his power with Daniel in the revelation of the mystery of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation. In a much more profound way, God has shared his wisdom and his power with us in the gospel. Paul explains this as well in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The crucifixion of a man who claimed to be the Messiah drives Jewish people away; that idea revolts and repels Jews, trips them up, and they reject the gospel. For Gentiles, one who claims to be a Savior or a king being executed on a cross just seems like the most ridiculous joke, an idea to be laughed at and dismissed. But to some Jews and to some Gentiles, this message shines forth as the best news in history. What makes the difference? Paul says here it’s those who are called by God. That’s not everyone on the planet. Jesus said it’s those to whom he has chosen to reveal the Father. That’s not everyone on the planet. Our responsibility as believers in Jesus is to continue preaching Christ crucified. Or, as Paul said in his other letter to the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” Our responsibility is to smell like Jesus! For some people, the aroma will repel and result in rejection and judgment; for some people, the aroma will attract and result in acceptance and life. What makes the ultimate, salvific difference is the Father’s providential, circumstantial drawing, Jesus’s revealing himself to them, and the Spirit’s enabling them to understand and respond properly to the message and giving them life. In the end, like Daniel, we owe praise to our mystery-revealing, wisdomgiving God for our own salvation and for the salvation of everyone who comes to know Jesus. We close with this benediction from the apostle Paul in Romans 16:25-27: “25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”